Behavioral Strategies More Effective Than Persuasion in Promoting Vaccination

10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30926-9

More than 200 COVID-19 vaccines are in development worldwide, with governments securing deals to access advance doses. But access is only one issue. Willingness to accept a COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available has varied considerably across countries over the course of the pandemic. In The Lancet Infectious Diseases, we presented data collected in Australia in April, 2020,1Dodd RH Cvejic E Bonner C Pickles K McCaffery K Willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19 in Australia.Lancet Infect Dis. 2020; (published online June 30.)https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30559-4Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (8) Google Scholar which suggested 86% of people surveyed (3741 of 4362) would be willing to vaccinate against COVID-19 if a vaccine became available. Furthermore, the COCONEL group2The COCONEL GroupA future vaccination campaign against COVID-19 at risk of vaccine hesitancy and politicisation.Lancet Infect Dis. 2020; 20: 769-770Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (18) Google Scholar showed in March, 2020, that 74% of French citizens would vaccinate. Between April and July, 2020, willingness to vaccinate has ranged from 58% in the USA3Fisher KA Bloomstone SJ Walder J Crawford S Fouayzi H Mazor KM Attitudes toward a potential SARS-CoV-2 vaccine: a survey of US adults.Ann Intern Med. 2020; (published online Sept 4.)https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-3569Crossref Google Scholar to 64% in the UK4Sherman S Smith L Sim J et al.COVID-19 vaccination intention in the UK: results from the COVID-19 Vaccination Acceptability Study (CoVAccS), a nationally representative cross-sectional survey.medRxiv. 2020; (published online Aug 14.) (preprint, version 1)https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.13.20174045Google Scholar and 74% in New Zealand.5Menon RGV Thaker J Aotearoa-New Zealand public attitudes to COVID-19 vaccine.https://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/15567Date: Aug 20, 2020Google Scholar The New Zealand data showed that the most commonly reported reasons to get vaccinated were to protect family and self, with safety being the chief concern about the vaccine. It is important to investigate both motivations and concerns about a future COVID-19 vaccine to help shape communication strategies.

Concerns and motivations about COVID-19 vaccination

This handbook is for journalists, doctors, nurses, policy makers, researchers, teachers, students, parents – in short, it’s for everyone who wants to know more: about the COVID-19 vaccines, how to talk to others about them, how to challenge misinformation about the vaccines. The handbook is available in form of a PDF and also of  a "living wiki". The pdf  version is self-contained but additionally provides access to the “wiki” with more detailed information Vaccination behaviour is a complex topic and many of the concepts involved are interlinked. The visualisation below gives an idea of the interconnectivity of higher and lower level mappings of the pages in the Wiki

The COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Handbook | A practical guide for improving vaccine communication and fighting misinformation

#BehavioralScientists handbook on framing communications for #Vaccines https://ndownloader.figstatic.com/files/25980764 Techniques to improve vaccine communication & fight misinformation, created by a team of scientific experts @SciBeh

New in the #RRI Toolkit The #COVID19 Vaccine Communication Handbook https://rri-tools.eu/-/the-covid-19-vaccine-communication-handbook-a-practical-guide-for-improving-vaccine-communication-and-fighting-misinformation… A practical guide for improving #vaccine comm & fighting #misinformation by @SciBeh @STWorg @dlholf @stefanmherzog @johnfocook @PhilippMSchmid @dlholf @adamhfinn & more #scicomm

The handbook was faciliated by @SciBeh / http://scibeh.org is an initiative with the goal of making behavioural science crisis-ready by creating the infrastructure necessary for rapid crisis knowledge management. https://vimeo.com/453631316 #c19vaxwiki #scibeh

The handbook and wiki was created by a team of renowned scientific experts. The project was coordinated by @SciBeh’s coordinators @STWorg, @dlholf, Ulrike Hahn, @stefanmherzog & led by coordinating lead authors @STWorg @johnfocook @PhilippMSchmid @dlholf @adamhfinn #c19vaxwiki

This handbook is self-contained but additionally provides access to a “wiki” with more detailed information. Wherever you see a WIKI button in the handbook, a click will take you to in-depth information that is updated by our team as new knowledge becomes available. #c19vaxwiki

This handbook is for journalists, doctors, nurses, policy makers, researchers, teachers, students, parents & more. It’s for everyone who wants to know more about COVID-19 vaccines, how to talk to others about them & how to challenge misinformation about the vaccines. #c19vaxwiki

The COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Handbook: A practical guide for improving vaccine communication & fighting misinformation https://sks.to/c19vax Our new handbook (PDF+living wiki), which helps fighting the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. #c19vaxwiki 1/n

Researchers say big Facebook accounts still condemn vaccines while anti-vaxxers banned from Facebook have fled to Instagram

Misinformation 'superspreaders': Covid vaccine falsehoods still thriving on Facebook and Instagram

COVID-19 Vaccine Seminar Series

COVID-19 Seminars

Impfbereitschaft nach Parteienpräferenz. Es ist noch ein weiter Weg.

Launching a new dashboard to track local news reports and state press releases on how many vaccine doses will be allocated to each state, since there seems to be no public federal effort. Browse each state's allocations and a map of doses per capita.

Some great vaccine myth busting summary images to share

As everyone's focus turns to vaccine hesitancy, we will need to take a close look not just at social media but at Amazon- the "top" recommendations I get when typing in 'vaccine' are all anti-vaxx

Behavioural considerations for acceptance and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines: WHO technical advisory group on behavioural insights and sciences for health, meeting report, 15 October 2020

10.1038/s41591-020-01180-x

If asked, many scientists would probably agree with the statement ‘Natural infection gives better immunity than vaccination’. Indeed, if one survives the infection, there are certainly many pathogens for which natural infection induces stronger immune responses and more long-lived immunity than does vaccination. Measles is prototypic of this1. While there was a clear risk, after infection, of death, encephalitis and pneumonia before there was a vaccine, survivors gained lifelong immunity. Vaccination against measles, on the other hand, requires two shots and may not offer lifelong complete protection but has proven to be good enough to keep the disease in check when widely implemented.

Toward superhuman SARS-CoV-2 immunity?

History. Pfizer/BioNTech press release, announcing request for FDA vaccine emergency use:

Global efforts for development of a COVID-19 vaccine are yielding multiple results including some new and as yet unlicensed technologies.1Le TT Cramer JP Chen R Mayhew S Evolution of the COVID-19 vaccine development landscape.Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2020; 19: 667-668Crossref PubMed Scopus (17) Google Scholar Reception of these vaccine candidates by a skeptical public will challenge wide acceptance of new vaccines. Regulatory safety thresholds are a minimum bar that a product must pass to attain regulatory approval, but for the general public, cumulative safety experience will be important. Trust is earned with time, and with repeated experience. Vaccines have a long safety history, but COVID-19 vaccines are new. In this context, Yanjun Zhang and colleagues' report of their phase 1/2 trial of a new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccine in The Lancet Infectious Diseases is instructive.2Zhang Y Zheng G Pan H et al.Safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in healthy adults aged 18–59 years: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 1/2 clinical trial.Lancet Infect Dis. 2020; (published online Nov 17.)https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30843-4Google Scholar

10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30870-7

Expecting the unexpected with COVID-19 vaccines

Relevant today: ever sharp @nataliexdean on Vaccine Effectiveness vs Efficacy from many moons ago (i.e. about a month). Short summary - do not compare $PFE very encouraging 90% efficacy result directly with measures of accepted vaccines (like measles) that report effectiveness.

10.31234/osf.io/yjfg3

Faces are one of the key ways that we obtain social information about others. They allow people to identify individuals, understand conversational cues, and make judgements about other’s mental states. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, widespread mask-wearing practices were implemented, causing a shift in the way Americans typically interact. This introduction of masks into social exchanges posed a potential challenge – how would people make these important inferences about others when a large source of information was no longer available? We conducted two studies that investigated the impact of mask exposure on emotion perception. In particular, we measured how participants used facial landmarks (visual cues) and the expressed valence and arousal (affective cues), to make similarity judgements about pairs of emotion faces. Study 1 found that participants with higher levels of mask exposure used cues from the eyes to a greater extent when judging emotion similarity than participants with less mask exposure. Study 2 measured participants’ emotion perception in both April and September 2020 – before and after widespread mask adoption – in the same group of participants to examine changes in the use of facial cues over time. Results revealed an overall increase in the use of visual cues from April to September. Further, as mask exposure increased, people with the most social interaction showed the largest increase in the use of visual facial cues. These results provide evidence that a shift has occurred in how people process faces such that the more people are interacting with others that are wearing masks, the more they have learned to focus on visual cues from the eye area of the face.

Mask exposure during COVID-19 changes emotional face processing

10.31234/osf.io/dpa2j

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, wearing protective facial masks has become a divisive issue, yet little is known about what drives differences in mask wearing across individuals. We surveyed 711 people around the world, asking about mask wearing and several other variables. We found that people who reported greater perceived risk of infection, stress, and those with greater consideration of future consequences reported wearing masks more often during in-person interactions. Participants who knew more people who had been infected and those who lived in postal codes with higher prevalence of COVID-19 perceived their risk of infection to be higher and reported greater pandemic-related stress. Perceived risk of infection and pandemic-related stress were higher overall in women and those reporting greater future-orientedness. Finally, participants who were more politically conservative reported lower perceived risk of becoming infected and lower stress than those who were more liberal, but there was no reliable difference in mask wearing between these groups. This is the first of four papers investigating mask wearing using this data set; the forthcoming papers will focus on predicting attitudes and motivations about mask wearing, the situations in which people do and do not report wearing masks, and the extent to which people report mask wearing in their communities. This is part of a broader study to understand the psychological and social influences on mask wearing and, more broadly, the impacts of the pandemic on human behavior and social interactions.

Mask wearing is associated with COVID-19 Prevalence, Risk, Stress, and Future Orientation

10.31234/osf.io/2p39h

The COVID-19 pandemic has required people worldwide to adjust their behavior for several months in response to a crisis of rare proportions. Little is known about the specific factors that affected the progression of the public’s reactions during the pandemic. Individual factors associated with pandemic-related behavior in general, and compliance with public health measures in particular, are not firmly established. We undertook a survey of behavior, emotions, reasoning style, and mental health in the province of Quebec at the beginning, the peak, and the aftermath of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We recruited 530 responders from a convenience sample; 154 responders participated in all three surveys. Emotions were most intense at the beginning of the first wave of the pandemic, not at its peak. Responders’ compliance with three public health measures decreased between the peak and the aftermath of the first wave of the pandemic; however, mask wearing also became more common. Pandemic-related behavior in general, and compliance with public health measures specifically, were predicted by avoidance-related emotions evoked by the pandemic. Approach-related emotions linked to the societal response contributed specifically to the prediction of compliance with public health measures. In contrast, reasoning style and mental health did not as consistently predict behavior during the pandemic. Our research may help inform public health policy during other waves of the COVID-19 pandemic and future global health crises.

Emotions, reasoning, and mental health as predictors of behavior during three phases of the COVID-19 pandemic

10.31234/osf.io/8qthw

The negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy is well documented, with widespread furloughs, job loss, and financial insecurity. Concerns have been raised about increases in maladaptive coping behaviours such as gambling, to offset financial losses. Similarly, as individuals spend increased time at home, new populations may initiate or increase the frequency of gambling behaviours. The current study used a large longitudinal study of UK adults (N = 32,559) to examine a range of sociodemographic, stress, and health predictors of (i) gambling during strict lockdown (March to the first week of June 2020), (ii) gambling more frequently during strict lockdown compared to before lockdown, and (iii) continued increased rates of gambling during the relaxing of lockdown restrictions (end of July/early August 2020) compared to earlier in the lockdown (late May/early June 2020). Results from a logistic regression indicated that males, older ages, the employed, those with progressively lower levels of education, who lived in overcrowded accommodation, were highly bored, frequently drank alcohol, smoked or were ex-smokers, and had high risk-taking tendencies were more likely to gamble during strict lockdown. Individuals who were more likely to have increased their frequency of gambling during strict lockdown compared to before the lockdown were highly bored, employed, frequently drank alcohol, and had depression and anxiety, whilst men and current smokers were less likely. As lockdown restrictions eased, individuals of ethnic minority backgrounds, who were current smokers, and with lower education attainment were more likely to continue gambling at heightened rates. This suggests which risk groups should be targeted and provided with more effective coping strategies.

Predictors and patterns of gambling behaviour across the COVID-19 lockdown: findings from a UK cohort study

10.31234/osf.io/2wfgr

Background: On March 11, 2020, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. The social isolation and economic stress resulting from pandemic have the potential to exacerbate child abuse and neglect. Objective: This study examines the association of parents’ perceived social isolation and recent employment loss to risk for child maltreatment (neglect, verbal aggression, and physical punishment) in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants and Setting: Participants (N = 283) were adults living in the U.S. who were parents of at least one child 0-12 years of age. Methods: Participants completed an online survey approximately 2 weeks after the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 was a pandemic. The survey asked about recent changes (i.e., in the past 2 weeks) to employment status, parenting behaviors, use of discipline, use of spanking, and depressive symptoms. Results: Parents’ perceived social isolation and recent employment loss were associated with self-report of physical and emotional neglect and verbal aggression against the child, even after statistically controlling for parental depressive symptoms, income, and sociodemographic factors. Parents’ perceived social isolation was associated with parental report of changes in discipline, specifically, using discipline and spanking more often in the past 2 weeks. Associations were robust to analyses that included two variables that assessed days spent social distancing and days spent in “lockdown.” Conclusions: Study results point to the need for mental health supports to parents and children to ameliorate the strain created by COVID-19.

Parental Social Isolation and Child Maltreatment Risk During the COVID-19 Pandemic

To win the war on COVID-19, we need a multi-pronged public health strategy that includes a national testing plan that utilizes widespread frequent rapid antigen tests to stop the spread of the virus. We need to think strategically and creatively, be bold, and most importantly, not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

How We Can Stop the Spread of COVID-19 By Christmas

As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, an understanding of the structure and organization of beliefs in pandemic conspiracy theories and misinformation becomes increasingly critical for addressing the threat posed by these dubious ideas. In polling Americans about beliefs in 11 such ideas, we observed clear groupings of beliefs that correspond with different individual-level characteristics (e.g., support for Trump, distrust of scientists) and behavioral intentions (e.g., to take a vaccine, to engage in social activities). Moreover, we found that conspiracy theories enjoy more support, on average, than misinformation about dangerous health practices. Our findings suggest several paths for policymakers, communicators, and scientists to minimize the spread and impact of COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories.

The different forms of COVID-19 misinformation and their consequences

UK should boost vaccine programme to tackle Covid variant, says leading scientist

New coronavirus strain behind a fifth of cases in Norfolk, data shows

Risk assessment documents say cost, delays and shortages could lead to billions not vaccinated until 2024

Scheme to get Covid vaccine to poorer countries at 'high risk' of failure

10.1108/IJSSP-06-2020-0229

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the consequences of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) into crime-fighting and present new criminal landscapes in the Western Balkans Six (WB6) (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) at the beginning of the pandemic crisis. Design/methodology/approach The paper builds on the content analysis of legal acts, strategic documents, academic articles, media reporting, official documents, four semi-structured interviews with civil society organisations, two consultations with police officers and two consultations with civil society organisations. Findings In the first nine weeks of the spread of COVID-19, the WB6 experienced a small rise in the price of marijuana. The same applied to stimulant drugs like ecstasy and amphetamines. However, very little heroin was available. Prices of protective face masks, disinfectants and medicinal alcohol skyrocketed due to attempts at price gouging. There were cases of scams using mobile and digital technologies, as well as burglaries of newspaper or cigarette kiosks, shops, pharmacies and exchange offices. It was difficult to determine whether the smuggling of and trafficking in human beings experienced a decline or increase. No cases of sexual exploitation for providing online services were noted, although the number of calls made to organisations that assist in the area of human trafficking increased. People with drug and alcohol problems, persons living with HIV, those susceptible to stress, citizens with mental health problems, pensioners, the poor, the homeless and recently released prisoners were the biggest potential victims of crime at the onset of the crisis brought by the pandemic. Research limitations/implications The research findings are limited to specific forms of crime (illicit drug trade, economic crime, fraud, scams, theft, smuggling of and trafficking in human beings) in the WB6 and based on findings from four interviews and four consultations, together with available secondary data. Originality/value This is the first overview of criminal activities occurring in the WB6 during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

Organised crime in Western Balkans Six at the onset of coronavirus

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus cites lack of understanding of virus and lasting health effects

WHO chief says herd immunity approach to pandemic 'unethical'

The COVID-19 pandemic's damage to education and the economy could reverse decades of progress on child marriage and pregnancy. Sophie Cousins reports.

10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32112-7

2·5 million more child marriages due to COVID-19 pandemic

The NIHR today issued guidance to protect both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 research during a ‘second wave’ of high COVID-19 activity.

NIHR issues guidance to ensure research protected in a ‘second wave’

13568

We study price-setting behavior in German firm-level survey data to infer the relative importance of supply and demand during the Covid-19 pandemic. Supply and demand forces coexist, but demand shortages dominate in the short run. A reported negative impact of Covid-19 on current business is associated with a rise in the probability to decrease prices up to eleven percentage points. These results imply a role for aggregate demand stabilization policy to buffer the economic consequences of Covid-19 while containing the pandemic.

Demand or Supply? Price Adjustment during the COVID-19 Pandemic

13567

Various countries have implemented transfer programs to individuals since the Covid-19 outbreaks. However, the extent to which such transfers alleviate economic recessions is unclear. This paper analyzes a South Korean program, which provided vouchers redeemable only at small local businesses. We find that, due to the program, over 30% of households across all income groups increased their food and overall household spending, but the usage restriction may have affected consumer choice, distorting business competition. While the employment and sales of small businesses improved, the program’s fiscal sustainability is in question because of the large tax exemption.

Can Stimulus Checks Boost an Economy under COVID-19? Evidence from South Korea

13562

In recent US recessions, employment losses have been much larger for men than for women. Yet, in the current recession caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the opposite is true: unemployment is higher among women. In this paper, we analyze the causes and consequences of this phenomenon. We argue that women have experienced sharp employment losses both because their employment is concentrated in heavily affected sectors such as restaurants, and due to increased childcare needs caused by school and daycare closures, preventing many women from working. We analyze the repercussions of this trend using a quantitative macroeconomic model featuring heterogeneity in gender, marital status, childcare needs, and human capital. Our quantitative analysis suggests that a pandemic recession will i) feature a strong transmission from employment to aggregate demand due to diminished within-household insurance; ii) result in a widening of the gender wage gap throughout the recovery; and iii) contribute to a weakening of the gender norms that currently produce a lopsided distribution of the division of labor in home work and childcare.

This Time It’s Different: The Role of Women’s Employment in a Pandemic Recession

13560

The perception of risk affects how people behave during crises. We conduct a series of experiments to explore how people form COVID-19 mortality risk beliefs and the implications for prosocial behavior. We first document that people overestimate their own risk and that of young people, while underestimating the risk old people face. We show that the availability heuristic contributes to these biased beliefs. Using information about the actual risk to debias people’s own risk perception does not affect donations to the Centers for Disease Control but does decrease the amount of time invested in learning how to protect older people. This constitutes a debiasing social dilemma. Additionally providing information on the risk for the elderly, however, counteracts these negative effects. Importantly, debiasing seems to operate through the subjective categorization of and emotional response to new information.

Socially Optimal Mistakes? Debiasing COVID-19 Mortality Risk Perceptions and Prosocial Behavior

13556

We examine the differential effects of Covid-19 and related restrictions on individuals with dependent children in Germany. We specifically focus on the role of school and day care center closures, which may be regarded as a “disruptive exogenous shock” to family life. We make use of a novel representative survey of parental well-being collected in May and June 2020 in Germany, when schools and day care centers were closed but while other measures had been relaxed and new infections were low. In our descriptive analysis, we compare well-being during this period with a pre-crisis period for different groups. In a difference-in-differences design, we compare the change for individuals with children to the change for individuals without children, accounting for unrelated trends as well as potential survey mode and context effects. We find that the crisis lowered the relative well-being of individuals with children, especially for individuals with young children, for women, and for persons with lower secondary schooling qualifications. Our results suggest that public policy measures taken to contain Covid-19 can have large effects on family well-being, with implications for child development and parental labor market outcomes.

Parental Well-Being in Times of COVID-19 in Germany

This paper evaluates the global welfare consequences of increases in mortality and poverty generated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Increases in mortality are measured in terms of the number of years of life lost (LY) to the pandemic. Additional years spent in poverty (PY) are conservatively estimated using growth estimates for 2020 and two dierent scenarios for its distributional characteristics. Using years of life as a welfare metric yields a single parameter that captures the underlying trade-off between lives and livelihoods: how many PYs have the same welfare cost as one LY. Taking an agnostic view of this parameter, estimates of LYs and PYs are compared across countries for different scenarios. Three main ndings arise. First, as of early June 2020, the pandemic (and the observed private and policy responses) has generated at least 68 million additional poverty years and 4.3 million years of life lost across 150 countries. The ratio of PYs to LYs is very large in most countries, suggesting that the poverty consequences of the crisis are of paramount importance. Second, this ratio declines systematically with GDP per capita: poverty accounts for a much greater share of the welfare costs in poorer countries. Finally, the dominance of poverty over mortality is reversed in a counterfactual herd immunity scenario: without any policy intervention, LYs tend to be greater than PYs, and the overall welfare losses are greater.

13549

Lives and Livelihoods: Estimates of the Global Mortality and Poverty Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic

13768

We study the gender differences in aversion to COVID-19 exposure. We use a natural experiment of the 2020 US Open, which was organized in the country with the highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, and was the first major professional tennis tournament that was held after the season had been paused for six months. We analyze the gender gap in the propensity to voluntarily withdraw because of COVID-19 concerns among players who were eligible and fit to play. We find that female players were significantly more likely than male players to have withdrawn from the 2020 US Open. While players from countries characterized by relatively high levels of trust and patience and relatively low levels of risk-taking were more likely to have withdrawn than their counterparts from other countries, female players exhibited significantly higher levels of aversion to pandemic exposure than male players even after cross-country differences in preferences are accounted for. About 15% of the probability of withdrawing that is explained by our model can be attributed to gender.

The Gender Gap in Aversion to COVID-19 Exposure: Evidence from Professional Tennis

A combination of antiviral drugs usually used to treat HIV has no beneficial effect in patients hospitalised with COVID-19, a peer-reviewed study said on Monday, confirming the initial results of a large-scale randomised trial of the drug.

HIV treatment has no benefit for hospitalised COVID-19 patients: study

In this spirit, Keystone Symposia has reimagined the scientific conference, leveraging emerging digital media technologies to connect scientists in new ways with our eSymposia series. Through this innovative platform, we will continue to catalyze discovery and accelerate breakthroughs. Despite inherent limitations to virtual interfaces, valuable benefits have also emerged.

10.1126/sciadv.abe5815

Reimagining scientific conferences during the pandemic and beyond

Once the virus escapes into the air inside a building, you have two options: bring in fresh air from outside or remove the virus from the air inside the building.

How to use ventilation and air filtration to prevent the spread of coronavirus indoors

Although confidence is commonly believed to be an essential element in decision making, it remains unclear what gives rise to one’s sense of confidence. Recent Bayesian theories propose that confidence is computed, in part, from the degree of uncertainty in sensory evidence. Alternatively, observers can use physical properties of the stimulus as a heuristic to confidence. In the current study, we developed ideal observer models for either hypothesis and compared their predictions against human data obtained from psychophysical experiments. Participants reported the orientation of a stimulus, and their confidence in this estimate, under varying levels of internal and external noise. As predicted by the Bayesian model, we found a consistent link between confidence and behavioral variability for a given stimulus orientation. Confidence was higher when orientation estimates were more precise, for both internal and external sources of noise. However, we observed the inverse pattern when comparing between stimulus orientations: although observers gave more precise orientation estimates for cardinal orientations (a phenomenon known as the oblique effect), they were more confident about oblique orientations. We show that these results are well explained by a strategy to confidence that is based on the perceived amount of noise in the stimulus. Altogether, our results suggest that confidence is not always computed from the degree of uncertainty in one’s perceptual evidence, but can instead be based on visual cues that function as simple heuristics to confidence.

Dual strategies in human confidence judgments

10.1101/2020.09.17.299743

A large, Phase 3 study testing a Covid-19 vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford at dozens of sites across the U.S. has been put on hold due to a suspected serious adverse reaction in a participant in the United Kingdom.

AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine study put on hold due to suspected adverse reaction in participant in the U.K.

arXiv:2009.03798

Evaluating relative changes leads to additional insights which would remain hidden when only evaluating absolute changes. We analyze a dataset describing mobility of mobile phones in Austria before, during COVID-19 lock-down measures until recent. By applying compositional data analysis we show that formerly hidden information becomes available: we see that the elderly population groups increase relative mobility and that the younger groups especially on weekends also do not decrease their mobility as much as the others.

The impact of COVID-19 on relative changes in aggregated mobility using mobile-phone data

Several racial disparities have been observed in the impacts of COVID-19 in the United States. In this paper, we used a representative sample of adults in Michigan to examine differences in COVID-19 impacts on Blacks and Whites in four domains: direct, perceived, political, and behavioral. We found that in the initial wave of the outbreak in May 2020, Blacks were more likely to be diagnosed or know someone who was diagnosed, or more likely to lose their job compared to Whites. Additionally, Blacks differed significantly from Whites in their assessment of COVID-19’s threat to public health and the economy, the adequacy of government responses to COVID-19, and the appropriateness of behavioral changes to mitigate COVID-19’s spread. Although in many cases these views of COVID-19 were also associated with political ideology, this association was significantly stronger for Whites than Blacks. We conclude by discussing the implications of an ongoing and highly politicized public health crisis that has racially disparate impacts in multiple domains.

10.31234/osf.io/v2jda

Racial disparities in COVID-19 impacts in Michigan, USA

The White House’s new science adviser says: nothing. The science disagrees.

What Young, Healthy People Have to Fear From COVID-19

Mandatory and voluntary mask policies may have yet unknown social and behavioral consequences related to the effectiveness of the measure, stigmatization, and perceived fairness. Serial cross-sectional data (April 14 to May 26, 2020) from nearly 7,000 German participants demonstrate that implementing a mandatory policy increased actual compliance despite moderate acceptance; mask wearing correlated positively with other protective behaviors. A preregistered experiment (n = 925) further indicates that a voluntary policy would likely lead to insufficient compliance, would be perceived as less fair, and could intensify stigmatization. A mandatory policy appears to be an effective, fair, and socially responsible solution to curb transmissions of airborne viruses.

10.1073/pnas.2011674117

Social and behavioral consequences of mask policies during the COVID-19 pandemic

Can “urban-centric” local television news coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic affect the behavior of rural residents with lived experiences so different from their “local” news coverage? Leveraging quasi-random geographic variation in media markets for 771 matched rural counties, we show that rural residents are more likely to practice social distancing if they live in a media market that is more impacted by COVID-19. Individual-level survey responses from residents of these counties confirm county-level behavioral differences and help attribute the differences we identify to differences in local television news coverage—self-reported differences only exist among respondents who prefer watching local news, and there are no differences in media usage or consumption across media markets. Although important for showing the ability of local television news to affect behavior despite urban–rural differences, the media-related effects we identify are at most half the size of the differences related to partisan differences.

10.1073/pnas.2009384117

The effect of big-city news on rural America during the COVID-19 pandemic

The number of COVID-19 deaths is often used as a key indicator of SARS-CoV-2 epidemic size. 42 However, heterogeneous burdens in nursing homes and variable reporting of deaths in elderly 43 individuals can hamper comparisons of deaths and the number of infections associated with them 44 across countries. Using age-specific death data from 45 countries, we find that relative differences 45 in the number of deaths by age amongst individuals aged <65 years old are highly consistent across 46 locations. Combining these data with data from 15 seroprevalence surveys we demonstrate how 47 age-specific infection fatality ratios (IFRs) can be used to reconstruct infected population 48 proportions. We find notable heterogeneity in overall IFR estimates as suggested by individual 49 serological studies and observe that for most European countries the reported number of deaths 50 amongst ≥65s are significantly greater than expected, consistent with high infection attack rates 51 experienced by nursing home populations in Europe. Age-specific COVID-19 death data in 52 younger individuals can provide a robust indicator of population immunity.

10.1101/2020.08.24.20180851

Age-specific mortality and immunity patterns of SARS-CoV-2 infection in 45 countries